By SHEILA HURST
Organic gardening promises to not only keep chemicals out of your garden and off your plate, gardeners also contend that an organic garden can be easier and cheaper to maintain.
Patricia Torgersen of Sandwich became interested in organic gardening when she discovered that chemical pesticides and fertilizers could actually be harmful to the soil and plants.
“You find out that these chemical companies have no soul. They have no conscience,” she said. “They’re poisoning the Earth, the water, everything.”
“If you use chemicals in your garden, that doesn’t nourish the soil,” Denise Long of Buzzard’s Bay said. “It can be a quick fix but in the long run, it doesn’t sustain the soil. It’s like a drug in a way. It kind of fixes the immediate problem, but it doesn’t fix the deeper problem.”
The Environmental Protection Agency now considers 60 percent of all herbicides, 90 percent of all fungicides and 30 percent of all insecticides carcinogenic, according to a web site entitled, “Organic on Cape Cod.” The site also states that pesticides have been linked to cancer, birth defects, and nerve damage.
The alternative to using such chemicals is to build healthy soil through composting, which gives plants everything they need to resist disease and insects. Planting different kinds of vegetables while making sure not to plant the same types in one area every year also helps to keep the soil alive without the need for chemical fertilizers.
“The most important component of healthy soil is compost. Everybody has grass clippings and leaves and so forth and that’s gold,” Ms. Torgersen said. “The main thing is the soil. Healthy soil makes healthy plants and healthy plants really don’t need a lot of help.”
Oak leaves, which end up in most yards in the fall, are some of the best leaves to use according to Ms. Torgersen. The only kind of local leaves to avoid adding to a compost pile are black walnut leaves since those contain a natural growth inhibitor. Shredding leaves first with a lawn mower will help them break down faster in the compost pile.
In addition to leaves, Cape Cod also has an abundance of seaweed. Some gardeners collect it from the beach and add it right to their gardens or compost piles.
“I’ve always been interested in gardening and you can grow wonderful things with compost,” Laurie York of Cataumet said. “I use a lot of seaweed. The rain sort of washes the salt right off.”
Ms. York is a national award winning gardener and even though she lives near the beach, which means sandy soil, she has built her garden up with compost to such an extent that she can now grow just about anything. Her garden includes a variety of herbs, heather, sunflowers, tomatoes, cucumbers, beets, brussel sprouts, summer squash, and beans of all kinds.
Worms help to naturally break compost down while producing both a natural fertilizer and a pesticide. They do this with their castings, which contain an excessive amount of nutrients. These castings are so good for the garden that they can be purchased at gardening stores, but since worms help to break compost down while tunneling through and aerating the soil, it’s probably best to just lure more worms to the garden. Putting mulch down in the garden gives the worms something to eat and it encourages their growth. Some gardeners add red wiggler worms right to their compost piles.
Compost should not include any oil, meat, or milk products since those can attract animals. Wood products shouldn’t be used either since they take a long time to break down. Any kind of plant-based materials including coffee grounds, melon rinds, or old vegetables are good for composting.
“They recommend turning your compost pile on a regular basis to aerate it,” Ms. Long said. “But I’m a lazy gardener and I just let it sit and let nature break it down. In nature, there are all these natural layers of compost like leaves and pine needles. It’s a natural process and eventually it breaks down.”
After building healthy soil with compost, if there’s still a need for pest control, there are poisonous plants that can be found in every garden to do the job. Rhubarb leaves, for example, are poisonous to humans and insects and can eliminate aphids on roses.
“So you can make a rhubarb pie with your rhubarb, and then take the leftover leaves and boil them to make a liquid that will kill your insects,” Ms. Torgersen said.
Marigolds are famous for keeping bugs and rabbits away. Such techniques that rely on plants already growing in the garden mean that fertilizers and pesticides won’t need to be bought, which saves money. Organic gardening also requires less water than regular gardening because compost retains moisture.
“If you work with existing materials that you can get locally like grass clippings and leaves and seaweed, it’s definitely cheaper,” Ms. Long said. “It’s all free material.”
Upper Cape Organic Gardeners formed about 15 years ago so that local gardeners could meet and exchange these kinds of ideas and techniques. While the group once consisted of a few self-acclaimed dirt diggers who met in each other’s gardens, membership has now grown to about 70 people. Topics discussed at monthly meetings range from starting seeds to companion planting to edible flowers. At times, members bring their plants to the meetings to discuss problems or to participate in a seedling exchange. Speakers are also encouraged to attend meetings to educate the group.
All three women interviewed for this story are members of the Upper Cape Organic Gardeners. Ms. Torgerson currently serves as president and Ms. Long as vice president of the group whose membership includes gardeners who plant flowers, gardeners who prefer to cultivate vegetables and herbs, and those who grow both.
“We want to encourage people to expand on their garden experience,” said Ms. Long.
“When you can share these things with other people, it’s kind of like group therapy for organic gardeners,” Ms. York said. “With organic gardening, you have to have some experience in it rather than just reading books about it. The way that you go about it will also depend on your location, so it helps to talk with people from the same area.”
Another purpose of the group is to promote organic gardening on Cape Cod through education. Each year at the Barnstable County Fair, the group sponsors an exhibit designed to introduce the public to different aspects of organic gardening. While the group usually wins blue ribbons, last year it won for educational excellence with an exhibit that showed how easy organic gardening can be. The exhibit included the use of soaker hoses to avoid using too much water and it showed how promoting birds in your garden can help control insects.
When you attract the right birds, “then you can just sit back in your lawn chair, drink lemonade, and watch the birds eat your bugs,” Ms. York said, adding that bats are also important for insect control since they can eat thousands of insects in one night.
Some insects can also be beneficial to the garden. Instead of spraying them with chemicals, organic gardeners will try to lure them into their yards.
“There’s a natural balance in the world,” Ms. Long said. “You want the good bugs in your garden and what attracts them are the bad bugs so you kind of have to have both. It’s a really fine balance.”
Ms. Long is a garden designer. With her business, Spirited Spaces, she helps promote the idea of organic gardening and she loves to see a kind of cycle of life happening in these gardens as well as in her own. She plants dill and the butterflies eat some of it while also building their chrysalises there. While the butterflies use some of it in these ways, there’s still plenty for her family to eat.
“You get to learn about your garden a lot on a deeper level,” she said. “It’s almost like a way of saving the world. That sounds funny, but there are so many issues with the chemicals in our environment and we really need to take a look at that. It does make you a more active participant in your garden.”
“There’s nothing better than going out and picking your own vegetables for your dinner,” Ms. Long said. “It’s just a great way to live.”
The Upper Cape Organic Gardeners meets on the second Saturday of the month all year long with the exception of July. Meetings are open to the public, begin at 10:30 AM, and are held at the Gus Canty Recreation Center in Falmouth.